Game Theory and Morality
Imagine you are a judge. The prison cells are under renovation and the jail cell only has room for one more, but you still have two people to judge. You take a look at the two cases. One is for Joe, who has poisoned and killed someone, and the other is for Jill, who admitted to witnessing Joe put the poison in, but did not warn the victim. Who will you put in jail and who will you let go free?
For most people, this is a simple question. Obviously Joe should go to prison! He was the one that actually murdered someone! But consider this, didn’t Jill’s crime of omission contribute equally to the man’s death as well? She had the chance to prevent the murder, but her silence resulted in the man’s death. Her inaction had the exact same effect as Joe’s action. Yet, the amount of blame we place on them is not equal at all.
In general, when there are events that are equal ethically (in this case, Joe’s and Jill’s), people tend to refer to crimes of commission with much more negativity than crimes of omission. In Game Theory and Morality, M Hoffman et al. explains why this phenomenon occurs. The main reason is that societal law usually provides punishment for actions while brushing off inaction, like you did above when you were the judge; this makes sense- after all, how would a society implement a justice system that prosecuted inaction? This would not logistically pan out well and be hard to enforce. The result is that for two ethically equal actions, there are now two different payouts: inaction results in a better outcome than action. This difference in payout is observed by the surrounding community and leads to imitation. Quickly, the community realizes that inaction is a better way to go. They then go on to teach their children this, which gives the next generation the idea that inaction is inherently better than action because of some ethical reason. However, little do they know that this sense of moral comparison is simply byproduct of the laws they were born into.
This attitudes people have towards inaction and action can be reflected in social phenomenon. For example, the bystander effect is a classic case of where morality and game theory intersect. Though action (bullying) and inaction (not bullying but watching and not stopping the bully) result in the same outcome (a victim is bullied), the perceived moral repercussions of the second are much less. The opposite action (stopping the bully) has a high moral payout but it could result in negative consequences (ie. physical injuries). Thus, according to game theory, the optimal outcome for the bystander is to continue standing by. They suffer neither the attack of their conscience when they aid the bully nor the possible physical consequences when they try to confront the bully. This result is exactly what occurs in real life as well, showing the power game theory has for predicting real scenarios and the actions people will take.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-19671-8_14 – Game Theory and Morality by Moshe Hoffman Erez, Yoeli Carlos, and David Navarrete